Yet There Is Method In It

I have just read the Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis De Bernieres.  And at first I was afraid I wouldnt like it and that it would simply be a theist bashing novel, or a literary work of art that sought to undermine religion (see Phillip Pullman). I was really suprised how much I enjoyed it, and how challenging to me (a religious believer) it was.

Synopsis lifted from wikipeadia:-

Cardinal Guzman lives extravagantly in the capital, and immorally, due to the discoveries of his having had a young son and his loathing of the poor shanty-dwellers who live below his palace. Despite the downfall of El Jerarca in Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, the drug trade continues and the economy of the country spirals ever downward. Cardinal Guzman’s clergy and the corrupt military of the country set out to destroy the heresy of the countryside, and, more specifically, Cochadebajo de los Gatos, the town where the characters of the previous books have settled. In so doing the hypocrisy of his faith with his own promiscuousness is revealed.

My thoughts:-

The book provided an insightful commentary on the absurd hypocrisies of life. Nothing is beyond the books scope, religion, politics, secularism, militarism, drugs, its got it all. The heros of the book dwell in Cochadebajo de los Gatos and encompass ex-communists, vigilantes, a defrocked priest, a professor, an indigenous Indian shaman, desertors from the army, a musicologist and an army of prostitutes. This city ruled on egalitarian principles with no institutional moralising (polygamy is tolerated) is presented as an idyll, inhabited by every type of person you could imagine, peacefully co-existing side by side. Politics and religion, the two main themes are represented in every form, desireable and abhorrent. In the postmodern character of this novel the heros are tolerant of all traditions. The criminals of the piece President Veracruz, Cardinal Guzman, Monsignor Anquilar are depicted in their fully abhorrent, corrupt and malign selves. The basic message of the novel is about the plurality of human traditions and beliefs, and the corruptibility and hypocrisy of power. The crusade scenes are deliberately bloodthirsty and make very hard reading, but achieve the desired effect both as an analogous comment and as a historical account of the real crusades that the religion of ‘brotherly love’ once perpetrated against those whose beliefs were somehow different.

The book though was full of hope, that the ordinary person can do extraordinary things. And any number of ordinary people can achieve even greater feats of extraordinariness. My favourite tool used in the book was the various spiritual entities, from ghosts, to saints, to heretical visions, to the indigenous gods of latin america. They are portrayed as real beings (for those who believe in them) but most importantly as reasonable beings. St Thomas Aquinas who appears renounces all his earthly writings and condemns those who engage in spiritually inspired violence based upon the theological ideas he was once certain of. The author interestingly has Thomas quote from his own hagiography where sometime prior to his death he stopped writing, having had a vision, and realised the hopeless inneffability of God. The spiritual beings, where they come into the book constantly remind us that the reality of belief often falls way short of the ideal. Likewise secularism is commented upon as having its own fanatics, its own violent failings (mostly this is done in the political storyline).

Like I said it was a challenging read, the villains were as bad as could be imagined, the atrocities conducted on their behalf too real for comfort. But I finished the book with a renewed sense of hope. The spiritual and political ideals that underpin the lives of many will survive the degradations of the institutions that purport to uphold them. There are good Christians for whom the taint of the inquisition would be grossly unfair. There are political people who wish to change the world we live in for the better, for whom the crimes of the powerful were a betrayal of all that was good. Power, as the saying goes, corrupts absolutely. But tolerance, plurality, sharing and common sympathy. These are virtues that can change the world, and you dont need to be a President or a Cardinal to bring about that change. In a ringing endorsement of existentialism and postmodernism, you and I can make choices about how we live and how we treat those who are different (which is everyone else in essence). Our choices can bring about change.

Here is an alternative review, which is slightly more positive.

I’d expected to dislike the encyclical entirely. And am suprised to find myself in partial agreement with AC1. But on reflection I think Pope Benedict isnt quite so negative as it is portrayed. Certainly it is inherently conservative, and I am a little concerned that he should make no reference to the Conciliar document Gaudium et Spes (which deals with the Church and its place in the modern world) a document that shows a desire for progress and reconciliation.

Most of the encyclical reads like the conclusions of a philosopher nearing his death (which he is), sorting out his intellectual estate. A lot of it is old news and a repeat of his pre-papal writings. Yet within the document he expresses some suprisingly (for him) progressive views. Including a reformulation of the idea of purgatory. Part of his lifes work has been to promote the unity between faith and reason, a project that is not entirely at ease in the postmodern condition where it seems to have been completely seperated.

I particularly found this quote interesting (having already judged the encyclical to be a discourse of power – and a conservative theological manifesto).

No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This is why the great thinkers of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were equally critical of atheism and theism.

Although ultimately he rejects this thesis as having gone too far, he accepts that it is a valid response to the injustices created by competing discourses of power – hiding behind whatever mask (including Christian love) it chooses to seduce us with. This is quite radical I must say for a conservative pope, and his vaguely implied conclusions are that in order to avoid reaching that same thesis the Church is in need of reform – perhaps not progressive reform – but a renewal of itself. And thus ultimately as all Christian institutions aim to do – he harks somewhat towards a return to the idealized picture of the early apostolic church.

His opening lines state this message quite clearly. Salvation/Redemption (the justification for the Church’s existence) is not a guarunteed given. It is offered, and therein lies hope. The goal towards which the achievement makes the journey of life worthwhile (within his worldview). But the process by which this is achieved is in our hands which sounds rather existential. In that light I feel that this encyclical is not quite as bad as I at first feared.

I thought I would comment on a small part of the latest encyclical from the Pope.

Part of the confusion (helpfully created by the Vatican) is the vague definition they are using: “if we consider it in its broad meaning as merely the opposite of theism” from the Catholic encyclopedia. The MW dictionary has a more insightful definition: “a disbelief in the existence of deity” – this is the definition I use. If you effectively define atheism as “those that oppose us” I wonder if confirmational bias as at work?

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history.

Atheism goes back at least to Epicurus, Democritus and Lucretius which obviously predates Christianity. Epicurus did raise the question of the problem of evil which is one but is not the only argument against the existence of God. To say all atheists used the problem of evil as their sole justification as an unjustified generalization.

Also atheism does not have “aims”. Atheism is an “is proposition”. An aim is an “ought proposition”. They are quite separate. Perhaps the Pope equates humanism and agnosticism with atheism.

A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God.

Well, it could if he was good but incompetent or powerless (as Epicurus pointed out). “I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.” Oscar Wilde

A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false.

Presumptuous, eh?

Anyway, I might paraphrase the above as “I am right and you, atheists, are wrong”. No actual arguments are given here.

It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim.

Atheism does not justify any action (being an “is” proposition) – I can only assume he must be referring to humanism. The lack of examples means I can’t really rebut this argument – he just states his accusation as an axiom. We just disagree on it.

I avoid mentioning the cruelty and violence that has been mandated by the church – that would be Ad hominem tu quoque. (But this is the pot calling the kettle black! ok I could not resist.)

A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope.

That is a very presumptuous generalisation. Is he saying there is not one atheist or existentialist with hope? Obviously this statement is false – I can think of some.

And incidentally, hope is not a criterion of truth – which seems to be the implication that is made.

No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering.

Ah we see the avenging of suffering touted again (slave morality). Nice. We don’t need no avenging around here!

Anti Citizen One

This is not a comment on science or any other academic discipline. But the news that Dr David Southall has been struck off by the GMC for serious proffessional misconduct, raises valid questions about the role, status and authority that society endows upon the ‘academic expert witness’.

Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. P.Feyerabend

Feyerabend may be both prejudicial and exaggerated in his judgements. But incidences (such as this new one in the news) justify our questioning of the credibility of the authority given to ‘expert witnesses’.

Is not the whole sorry area of the ‘expert witness’ bordering upon a mass susceptibility to the fallacy of the appeal to authority; where an assertion is deemed true because of the position or authority of the person asserting it?